


Vincent The Lost

by thecouchwitch



Category: Changeling: The Lost, The Mighty Boosh (TV)
Genre: M/M, Vince clone shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 18:59:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1097490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecouchwitch/pseuds/thecouchwitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Howard discovers his friend Vince has been kidnapped by a fae, a kind of ultra powerful and frankly berkish fairy who wants to own every pretty thing in the universe. Against his better judgement, he embarks alone on a quest to get his friend back. Unfortunately, the fae has fallen in love with Howard and he wont let The Mighty Boosh leave without a fight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vincent The Lost

**Author's Note:**

> An ambitious fic on my part. Thank you to my friend Loretta for beta-ing, you did a fantastic job! This will probably be between three to five chapters.

There was rarely a peaceful day at the Nabootique, the weird little shop in Shoreditch run by a shaman, his familiar and his two lackeys who couldn't find a job anywhere else. They didn't get many customers, mind you, unless you counted the back-alley black magic dealings that the store was clearly a front for; it was just that the employees of the shop attracted trouble like a mod to a scooter. Talking homicidal foxes, crazy green-skinned witch-men, demons from hell, you name it, the Nabootique has probably played host to it, and when there weren't screams of terror, explosions or loud ear-damaging music played by a certain Prince of Shoreditch, there was arguing. Lots of arguing. Far more arguing than there used to be, certainly.

 It was officially cool to be a wizard, all the trendy magazines had announced last week. Vampires and werewolves were out, sorcerers and fairies had made a comeback. Suddenly, Naboo's shady shamanistic business was booming, Bollo's DJ gigs were packed with people wanting to party with a real life familiar, and Vince, ever the fashion slave, went out and purchased an entirely new wardrobe that would put Dumbledore to shame, shoving the rest of his clothes into the hammerspace portal located at the back of his closet.

It didn't stop at clothes, though. That would have been too easy, and life was never easy on Howard Moon's sanity. After their failure to impress the goth girls with his amateur magic, Vince wanted to be prepared. He started gathering up all kinds of spellbooks and potion manuals that Naboo gave to him for a price, and nearly killed Howard with the shock when he saw him sitting up in bed reading.

Howard knew no good could come of it; giving Vince an iota of power always ended badly, but he did his best to ignore it; he'd been arguing with Vince too much lately and he was tired. If the berk wanted to blow himself up to impress a group of people shallower than a puddle, that was his business, and if not, the craze would blow over in a couple of weeks when either rockabilly came back in or Vince had a bad experience and turned his hair into snakes. Ignoring it was definitely the best way to ride the situation out, but then Howard opened his wardrobe and found Vince had turned his entire shoe collection into frogs, and, well, that was difficult to ignore.

“--So irresponsible I can't believe it, you're like a child walking on stilts--!”

“What's the big deal?! They were all old and grotty anyway!”

“Yes but they were mine and you can't just--”

“Just relax alright, we'll replace them--”

“With what?! We're barely making rent as it is, I don't even know how you can afford your stuff, every day more clothes mysteriously turn up--”

“You callin' me a thief?!”

“Stop putting words in my mouth!”

Naboo's door slammed open loud enough to make them go silent and look at the source of the noise. The Shaman stood in the doorway, hair a mess, still in his pyjamas and extremely hung over; he and Bollo had had a big one the night before at the Velvet Onion. “If you don't shut both your mouths, I'm docking your pay into non-existence.”

“But he--” they both said in unison, only to receive a glare angry enough to burn through steel. Their mouths shut immediately. “Howard, your shoes were ugly anyway, buy some new ones. Vince, you use a non-reversible spell on something again and I'll tell your stalkers you cried at the end of Charlotte's Web.”

They didn't try to argue. Naboo sighed in relief and trod past them towards the kitchen, no doubt to whip up a greasy breakfast to cure his hangover. Vince and Howard remained where they were in awkward silence, staring at anywhere but each other and fidgeting, until finally Vince spoke. “I'm sorry, alright? I was just trying to make them look better but I got my words mixed up.”

It was a surprisingly honest apology, and Howard knew his friend meant well, but he was still high on anger and all he could feel was offended. “Has it occurred to you that I like my shoes? The world is full of all sorts, Vince, but all you ever seem to think about is what you like. For a bloke who gets suicidally depressed when someone copies him, you put an awful lot of effort into trying to turn everyone into glittery clones.”

“I'm a complicated man, alright? And I don't want you to copy me, I just want you to stop wearing sandals with socks. They were givin' me panic attacks”

“Well, how would you like it if I decided your hair looked stupid black so I swapped your hair dye with some blood pudding?”

Vince looked genuinely confused for a second. “Don't be daft, my hair is naturally this colour.”

“I'm not one of your adoring worshippers, Vince.” Howard rolled his eyes tiredly. “You can't pretend around me, I've known you since school.”

“Yeah, so you'd remember my hair has always been black, passed down from my mother the night goddess, whose legendary dark-haired beauty invoked the jealousy of the other divines, making her flee and send me to Earth for safety.”

“I thought you were raised by Bryan Ferry in a forest after he found you as a baby trapped in a postage box covered in French stamps?” He said this with a small amount of amusement in his voice; Vince was always telling odd stories for his own entertainment, but Howard had known him long enough to know the truth from the lies, and they'd been to Bryan Ferry's house for Christmas parties a couple of times in the past, so as crazy as it sounded that version was definitely the real one.  
He expected Vince to smile and play along, come up with some kind of outlandish explanation to connect the two stories, but instead he simply looked puzzled again. “You might want to go to a doctor and get your memory checked, I think your age is catchin' up to you.”

With a flourish of his robes, he picked up the spellbook he'd dropped in the chaos of the frogs and headed downstairs to the shop, leaving Howard alone to clean up the slimy amphibians. Typical. No use whining over it though; he'd probably finish faster without Vince there, so he got to work catching the frogs and putting them in an old aquarium Naboo had in storage from when he was familiar-sitting his friend's turtle. He planned on taking the frogs to the pet shop on his lunch break, once again sacrificing something, this time his free time, so Vince would be happy.

He really couldn't understand why Vince had to lie about his hair colour of all things. His age he could sort of understand; everyone was obsessed with youth these days, including the crowds his friend was so desperate to please, and after Vince spent his thirtieth birthday on the edge of London Bridge, threatening to jump, Howard occasionally indulged him by acting like Vince was a young twenty-something, for sanity's sake. His hair though, that was a new level of ridiculous; it was clearly an unnatural shade of black and dye was all the rage among today's kids; most of Vince's posse did it, so what did he get out of denying his true sandy dish-waterey colour?

As he cleaned up the last of the mucus left by the frogs, Howard noticed a box, worn and covered in little painted drawings Vince had done, in the back of his wardrobe. Back when they'd lived in the zoo Vince painted and drew all the time, and somehow his designs had crept onto the cardboard boxes Howard had used to store their stuff due to a lack of proper furniture. When was the last time Vince had done art anyway? It was sad; he'd been pretty good at it, but he'd seemed to have lost interest in it recently.

Howard reached out, took the box out and placed it on the coffee table. Like he'd suspected, it was the one with their photo albums in it. He picked one out and began flicking through as he sat on the couch. The photos at the start were pretty old; some elementary school shots of playdates scattered in between highschool-aged pictures. Starting at fifteen, Vince had dyed his hair a lot; platinum blond, blue, pink, dark red, brown with blond and black tiger stripes, but no matter what ridiculous thing he did to it, he still looked, well, gorgeous? Amazing? Beautiful?

“Careful, Moon,” he told himself, suddenly remembering his birthday party; the one they'd both sworn to forget after nearly ruining their friendship. “Unsafe thoughts.”

It had been a right mess. A kiss from Vince, a love confession from Howard, a rejection and then a change of heart from Vince, and one last rejection from Howard to protect himself from any further confusion or embarrassment. Vince hadn't really loved him anyway, as evidenced by the trendy girl (who'd turned out to be a lesbian mistaking Vince for a woman, going by the sounds of surprise coming from his bedroom after the party had ended) he'd found a second after claiming he'd never love anyone but Howard, so trying anything with his friend would ultimately lead to heartbreak, even if he admittedly did still feel flashes of jealousy whenever he saw evidence of Vince's vibrant love life.

Vince bounded up the stairs, still carrying the spell book, and glanced around, then looked at his friend sitting on the couch. “Oi Howard, have you seen my iPod?”

“Yeah, you left it on the bed.”

“Cheers.” He dashed to Howard's room to retrieve his music player. Howard looked down at the album in his hands, then stood up and followed his friend. He found Vince in his room plugging his oversized headphones into the little device, and held the collection of photos for his friend to look at. He wasn't sure what he was trying to prove, he knew he was right, he just wanted Vince to admit it for once. “See? Blond hair.”

Vince glanced at the album and blinked. “That's photoshop.”

“Don't be a berk, why would I go to the trouble?”

“Well then it's not me, because my hair has never looked like that.” Vince placed the iPod in the pocket of his robes. He seemed upset; his eyes were wide as if he was in a state of panic, and his gait as he walked past Howard was that of someone trying to escape the scene of a crime. This was getting ridiculous. “Vince, come on!”

He chased him out the door and grabbed the back of his robe, yanking him back towards him so he couldn't escape. As Vince stumbled backwards, he trod on the hem of his robe and lost his balance completely, falling against the taller man and bringing them both crashing to the floor, Vince's spellbook flying from his hand and landing open on the floor.

“You've gone wrong!” the shorter of the two muttered angrily as he struggled to disentangle himself from the wizard's cloak and sit up. Howard sat up too, rubbing the arm he'd fallen on. “Well, maybe if you actually ate real food you wouldn't collapse at the slightest touch.”

“Don't be a tit, you-” The wannabe wizard reached out a hand midsentence to touch the spellbook, and was promptly engulfed in a light so bright that Howard made a pained noise and covered his eyes. The area near Vince suddenly felt very hot, like Howard had put his face too close to a heater, and for a few seconds the Yorkshire man could feel a blast of heated wind against his face. As quickly as it happened, the wind subsided, and when he peeked through his fingers the light had faded away. He uncovered his eyes, fully prepared to see the room had exploded or something, an angry speech about responsible use of magic already forming in his mind, but when he looked the room was perfectly intact. Nothing had changed, except that Vince was gone, leaving nothing but the book on the ground next to a pile of robes.

“Vince?” He got to his feet and looked around, hoping that his friend was standing in the hall naked and playing a cruel prank and that he hadn't just been vaporised. “Vince?! Oh my god, Naboo!”

“What?!” Naboo poked his head out the kitchen door, coffee mug in hand. Howard gestured wildly to the book of spells, panic surging through him. “Vince! He put his hand on the book and there was a light and I couldn't see and suddenly he was gone and I think he exploded!”

“Hold on, let me see, that sounds like a portal spell.” He trod over and kneeled next to the book to examine the page Vince had touched; a slightly tattered page with a large sigil of some kind that took up almost all the space. Any hope Howard had quickly faded when Naboo's face darkened somewhat. “That's not a portal spell.”

“Then what is it?!”

“Keep your knickers on, alright? It's a kind of truth spell; with a single touch it unravels lies, reveals hidden objects and uncovers secrets. Good for games of truth or dare, people always cheat in those. I usually use it to find my keys.”

“Well that's great Naboo, but I think we should focus on the fact it just made Vince EXPLODE.”

“Yeah, that's what I can't figure out.” The Shaman scratched his head. “It's not supposed to lethal. You sure this was the page he put his hand on?”

“Positive.”

Naboo turned to the pile of clothes left where Vince had been and carefully poked it, brow knitted in confusion. When nothing happened, he picked up the robe by a sleeve and stood up. To their surprise, a bundle of twigs fell out and landed on the pants, blouse and vest below. Naboo picked up the other garments and shook them, producing even more tiny branches until they had a considerable pile. Howard stared at the pile blankly. “He was turned to wood?”

“Can't be, there's no agriculture-themed spells in there.” Naboo picked up one of the twigs and looked at it closely. “Oh.”

“What is it?!” Howard asked urgently. Naboo was always far too deadpan in dangerous situations, which was to be expected from a 400 plus year old alien who had seen it all, but it was especially annoying at that moment because Vince's life could be at stake. Naboo let the stick drop to join its comrades and turned to the taller man. “That wasn't Vince, that was a fetch.”

“...A... Fetch?”

“Yeah. He's been kidnapped by a True Fae, you know, a sort of fairy? When they kidnap someone they leave behind a copy made using bits and pieces of objects. Sticks is a pretty popular choice. From the moment it's animated, a Fetch believes it's a real person and possesses the original's memories and personalties, but sometimes the copies are pretty shit and have mistakes in them. You and him were arguing about his hair earlier, yeah?”

“You're saying Vince was kidnapped by a fairy?” Howard asked in utter disbelief. “That's impossible, I would have noticed if there was an imposter. Are you sure it was a Sketch?”

“A Fetch, you ballbag. And yes, I've been to the Fae realm for a few parties, this kind of tree only grows in Arcadia.”

“This is unbelievable.” The jazz musician turned away and took his trilby off to run his fingers through his hair. Vince was kidnapped; the Vince he'd had breakfast with, who he'd argued with, who had tried to apologise only moments ago, had been an imposter. “Well, when did this happen?”

“Don't know, when did Vince first dye his hair?”

“That long ago?!” He looked at Naboo in shock. Naboo held up his hands in defence. “I don't know, alright? It could have been years ago, it could have been last night! Don't be yelling at me, I wasn't the one who kidnapped him.”

Howard let out a frustrated noise. “Let's... Just... Look, we need to find him. Where would the fairy be keeping him? Camden or some place?”

He looked at Naboo hopefully, but the shaman only stared back, his face looking disturbingly sympathetic. Howard felt a stab of fear in his heart. “We can get him back, right?”

Naboo sighed heavily and went to sit on the couch, the one Vince had found on special and insisted on buying when they'd gone furniture shopping. It used to be a respectable brown, but Vince fancied it as a project that needed improving and single-handedly sewed a new lining made from an ugly but fashionable printed material. Howard followed after the shorter man, his vague fear turning into panic. “Naboo? We need to get Vince back!”

“Fae kidnap humans because they like to use them as slaves,” Naboo said simply, not meeting Howard's eyes as he sipped his coffee. The dark-haired shaman winced at the low temperature and held his hand over the top, and suddenly the drink was steaming again. “If we were to look for him, we'd need to go to the specific realm of Arcadia that the Fae that took him, and there are thousands of those.”

“Then we'll check them all,” Howard said simply.

Naboo shifted uncomfortably. “Even then, he could already be dead.”

“What?!”

“Time passes differently in that realm. Aging is fucked up too, for everyone. You could wither and die in seconds, or not age a day for a thousand years. A day passes here, a century could pass there and vice versa. Grab me a scone from the kitchen, will you?”

He gestured in the kitchen's direction, but Howard didn't move. “He's still alive, Naboo. We need to get him back.”

“How would you know?”

“Because he's Vince! He wouldn't...” He didn't like the possibility, he wouldn't even think about it. He ground the heels of his palms against his eyes, trying to clear out the image of a skeletal Vince collapsing lifeless to the floor. He looked defiantly at Naboo. “Look, he isn't the type to just die. Have you seen him? He hasn't aged since he was about twenty-two; he would probably just sit there and stubbornly refused to wrinkle like a kid throwing a tantrum. The longer we wait to get him, the more he's going to hold it over us and use it as an excuse to get out of chores and manning the shop. We're going looking for him and that's final. I can already hear him now;”

He put on a fake Westminster accent, imitating Vince's voice. “ _Oh, you're so mean Howard, you left me to rot in this prison and I had to dig my way out with my bus pass, but at least I robbed these genius shoes off the guards! Can I have fifty Euros?_ ”

Naboo was silent for a moment, then drained his coffee and stood up. “Alright. Go find something that belongs to Vince that he already owned before dying his hair. I'll go get dressed.”

The shaman stretched and yawned and walked off to his room, leaving his mug on the coffee table. Howard hurried straight to Vince's room and started looking through his things. It was the biggest bedroom in the house, with a massive walk-in wardrobe, the size of which seemed suspiciously big in relation to the geography of the rest of the apartment. It was surprisingly tidy, but that was probably because Vince rarely slept there; normally he slept in the spare bed in Howard's room and only used his own bedroom if he had a girlfriend or boyfriend or person of indeterminate species over. Howard had once asked why he chose to forgo sleeping in his own room, and Vince had just shrugged. “We spent so many years on the floor together at the zoo, it feels kind of wrong without you now.”

It had been an incredibly touching sentiment until Vince made a smart comment about snoring and Howard chased him around the flat with a shoe.

After several minutes of searching through the wardrobe, Howard finally emerged with one of Vince's T-shirts, a Junior cut band shirt with a seventies solo act on the front, that Howard was certain he hadn't seen Vince wear since they worked at the zoo, maybe because “Ray”, whoever he was, had gone out of style among London youth. Satisfied with his find, he proceeded down the hall to Naboo's room, where Naboo was taking books out of his bookcases and rifling through the pages. A cauldron was set up in the middle of the room; a clear, steaming liquid bubbling inside.

“I have his shirt.” Howard held it up. “Where's Bollo, by the way?”

“He went home with a Mandrill after the gig.” The Shaman located the book he was searching for and took the shirt from Howard's hand. Without another word, he tossed it into the cauldron. A puff of smoke was released as it vanished into the potion, leaving the liquid a vibrant shade of opaque bubblegum pink. Naboo gestured at the cauldron. “In ya get.”

“What?” Howard blinked.

“It's a portal now. It'll drop you in the same vicinity as Vince.”

“You want me to go?!” Howard took a fearful step back. “It's a dangerous fold of reality! You're a shaman, you've been there, you should go.”

“Yeah, but I was banished from Arcadia after the last time I went to a party.”

“But how would I even get back?!”

“You've got your mobile phone on you, yeah? Give me a call and I'll magic you back. Christ, Howard, grow a pair and go, will you?”

“Snarky tit...” Howard muttered under his breath as he looked at the liquid. It looked cold and squishy and magical and generally unpleasant, and what supposedly lay on the other side didn't have much more appeal. On the other hand, he couldn't just leave Vince; he needed to be back home annoying Howard and spending all their money on hammocks and soft cheeses, like God intended. He looked back at his decidedly bored looking landlord. “Should I know anything before I jump in?”

“Yeah. Vince might not be the same person when you find him, Fae usually transform humans into creatures like themselves.”

“What, so I just look for a fairy in heels with a feather cut?”

A look of disgust crossed the shorter man's face. “Oi, that's not very PC, is it?”

“I didn't mean fairy as in--! Ugh, never mind.” Howard threw his hands up in a gesture of defeat and walked up the ladder set up by the cauldron. He didn't want to do this. He wanted to run and let someone else get killed while he stayed in a safe room playing jazz and tending a shop counter. He wasn't as brave and heroic as he liked to pretend and he knew and hated himself for it, but Vince needed help. When one wandered off and got in trouble, the other followed and saved him, that's how their friendship worked, that's how Howard's affection worked, and his conscience wasn't about to let him forget it. With only a moment's hesitation, he pinched his nose, held his breath, and jumped into the cauldron, shutting his eyes tight as the world around him vanished in a pink and swirly blur.

***


End file.
